Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 11:01:47 BST
From: Jack Rowan <jack_rowan@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Story of Tol - part 3

THE STORY OF TOL - part 3

This story includes descriptions of sexual relations between adult
men, and between an adult man and a 16/17-year-old teenager, including
bondage and SM.  If the law in your jurisdiction says that you're too
young to be reading this, then I suggest very strongly that you should
obey the law.

There are more notes about the story at the start of part 1 and the
end of part 9.

The Story of Tol is copyright.  Copy it for your own use if you wish,
archive it if you wish, make it available through the web if you wish,
but please credit it to Jack Rowan, don't change it, and include this
copyright note.  And don't publish it for profit, or charge for
accessing it.

Comments will be very gratefully received by Jack_Rowan@hotmail.com
Most authors like to receive comments.  It's the only way we know that
anyone is even reading the stories, and it's all the payoff we get.
======================================================================

THE STORY OF TOL
by Jack Rowan

3  Just Revenge
---------------

10
I was awoken by a loud click.

I opened my eyes.  The light was on, and Maxim was looking down at me.
He was holding a gun, touching my face between the eyes.

He spoke, in the same calm voice he used every day in the office.

"You have exactly five seconds to tell me where Aron is, before I kill
you."

I could hear other people moving around, and before I could answer, a
voice called in Slovian.  Maxim whirled and ran out of the room.

A moment later I heard his voice, shouting.

"Sweta Maria!  Dear lord, what has he done to you?"

Then he was back.  I had never seen, never imagined him in such fury.

"The keys!"  He struck my face with his pistol, and I lurched across
the bed in agony.  "The keys, dogshit!  Where are the fucking keys?"

"Table... in the living room..."

He barked at one of the Slovians and ran out.  Without a word, the man
hauled me out of the bed, and dumped me naked on the floor.  Then I
was dragged into the other room and dropped again.  The Slovian
covered me with his gun.

"It's okay, it's okay, I can stand," I heard Aron croak.  "But - help
me get this damn thing out of me."

"Oh, my dear child..." said Maxim, and I could hear he was weeping now.

Aron gave a long, agonised groan.  I knew what was happening.  Then
they came slowly into the room, Aron, striped and spotted with blood,
blood and slime running down his legs, leaning on his brother's arm.
One of the Slovians rushed to cover him with a blanket.  They helped
him to a chair, and wincing he sat down.

"Can I have some water, please?" he whispered, and one of them went to
the kitchen to get some.

Maxim kicked me in the groin, and I screamed and doubled up.

"I warned you!	I warned you, you heap of shit!  And now... you're
fucking dead!"

I heard him cock his gun, and then another man, seemingly English,
intervened.

"Maxim."

"You have no standing here, Master!" shouted Maxim.  "This is not even
to do with the way any more!  I am Maxim Miheliewicz Chernik, and this
is my family!"

"Maxim, nothing you could do will alter my respect for you, old
friend.  But don't do this in hot blood.  I know, and you know, that
you will regret it."

"Andrew, look at Aron!	Just LOOK at him!  I swore to my father..."  He
was weeping.  "Oh, just look, Andrew, that's all, at my lovely brother.
What do you see there?	What do you see?"

"I see a man.  A brave man.  Someone who risked everything in a vain
attempt to make a human being out of an animal.  Someone due every
respect."

Maxim was hugging Aron now, stroking his head.

"I cannot let this by.	I cannot..."

"Then let him decide," said Andrew.  "Let Aron decide.	Let this filth
know that his life depends on the man he brutalised."

"Very well," said Maxim, finally.  "I shall..."

"Bring him here,"  Aron whispered.

Two of them lifted me, and dragged me to him.  He looked in my face
with his puffed and reddened eyes.  All I could see in them was a
terrible grief.

"Why, Tol?  You could have had everything.  I would have GIVEN you
everything, everything I have, everything I am.  Why?  For god's sake,
tell me why."

I couldn't answer.  I just shook my head, weeping.  He looked at me
for a long moment.  My life was over and I waited for death.  I didn't
even fear it any more.

He looked away and shut his eyes.

"Don't kill him.  I have to know why he did it.  I must know, Maxim."

There was along pause.

"Very well.  Cuff him, and put him in the van.  Janu a Petru - stay
behind and clear this place up.  Let's go."

They came to cuff my hands behind my back, and I saw Andrew kneel by
Aron and hold his hand, speaking quietly to him.  And now the boy was
weeping.

I was flung on the metal floor of a van, and the doors banged.	It
crashed, gears grinding, down the lane, and was off.

-

11
The cell was lit by a single bulb, and it was cold.  I lay on the
pallet, my ankles shackled.  I was still naked.  There was a washbasin
with a cold tap, a lavatory.  The remains of the last meal they had
brought me, some kind of porridge, lay on the floor.  There was no
other furniture, nothing;  just the square box of the room.

I felt dirty, and I stank.  I needed a shave.  Where Maxim's gun had
hit me my face was broken and occasionally bled.  I felt like shit.

The guard who brought my food never said a word.  It seemed possible
to me that they would keep me here indefinitely, for years and years,
maybe for ever.

The things that had brought me to the cell were too horrible for
thought.  Sometimes I remembered the moment when Aron had decided that
I should live, and his grief-striken voice, asking me why.  But I
couldn't, I simply couldn't think about it, I couldn't begin to frame
an answer.

Every time I slept, the dream came to me.  But now it was not only
Duncan's face I saw, but also Aron's, drifting and merging together,
and that terrifying voice asking me why.  It was taking me over, the
dream;	sometimes I was half in it even when I was awake.

There was no relief for me in the cell.  Nothing happened.  I was
there alone with the past.  Sometimes I wept.  Sometimes I heard
myself moaning pointlessly, on and on.	I was in hell.

I don't know how long I was there;  four or five days, maybe, or a
week.

The door started the ratcheting noise which indicated another
mealtime.  But it was the man called Andrew who entered.

For a long while he looked at me, saying nothing.  I couldn't meet his
eye.

He sighed.

"So now we have to decide what to do with you.	Perhaps I should have
let Maxim kill you.  It would have been easier for everyone.  Maybe
even kinder."

"Why the fuck didn't you, then?"

The guard knelt to undo my ankles, and shakily I stood up.

"There will be a kind of hearing.  You must be there.  Come along,
we'll get you cleaned up."

He led the way out into a dank basement corridor, up some stairs and
through a door and along another passage, this time carpeted.  We met
no one.  Then we were in a bathroom.

"Take a shower.  Be quick."

He avoided looking at me.  I stepped into the shower.  The hot water
stung my face, and I cried out.  I washed myself quickly.  Andrew and
the guard waited.

He handed me a towel.

"My face fucking hurts."

He leant close to me.

"Do you honestly think I give a shit?" he whispered.  Then, louder:
"You'll see a doctor later.  Come on.  Get dressed."

They had provided a pair of jeans, a white shirt, a pair of trainers.

"Get yourself ready.  Hurry."

There was an electric razor, a comb, a toothbrush, and I used them
all.  My face was swollen and there was a jagged wound on my cheek.
My eyes looked grey and sunken.

"Here.	Give me your hands."

He handcuffed me.

"How is Aron?"

"God in hell!"

I could see that he was barely restraining himself from striking me.
The guard's eyes flashed, and he butted me to the door with his gun.

"Come with me, and you'll fucking see!"

The guard hurried me along the corridor.  Another door, and we
entered.

It was a large room lit by several windows.  I could see it was
daytime.  On one side there was table, with three men sitting behind
it, and behind them was another vast mandala, different from the one
in Maxim's office.  In front were chairs, and I was led to one.
Andrew and the guard sat beside me.  I saw Maxim, Colin and other
people I didn't know.  And far on the other side of the room, Aron,
and next him, an elderly woman, holding his hand.

The man in the centre of the table cleared his throat.

"Good morning, Mr Burnley.  I'm glad you could join us."

He was old and quite small, but the air of power about him was
unmistakable.  In his quick, small movements he reminded me at once of
Aron.  He was enormously unnerving.

"My name in Anthony.  Here with me are Master Paul, and Master
Desmond."  He gestured to them in turn.  "We are here to decide what
we are to do with you."

Something roused in me.  Who were these people?  Why were they sitting
judgment over me?

"Is this some kind of hearing?"

My voice was rasping;  it seemed abrupt and overloud after Anthony's.

"You might say that, Mr Burnley, yes."

"Then, what are the charges?  Who is representing me?  What right have
you to sit in judgment over me?  Who the hell are you?"

"Please, Mr Burnley.  Let us not play games.  We already know what
happened, and what you did.  This is not a trial in any sense.	We
have the power, and we are simply meeting to decide how we dispose of
you.  Should we shoot you?  And if not, what?  You are here simply as
an exhibit, and you have absolutely no rights at all."

He shuffled some papers, but didn't bother to look in my direction.

"However, let us put on record what happened.  Aron, you may find this
distressing.  Please leave if you wish."

"No."

I heard his voice, and my mind churned.  I began to weep.

"No, it's my duty to stay."

Anthony looked at him sharply, with a small smile.

"Well said.  Master Maxim."

The phrases floated past me, telling how he had given himself to me
and how I had betrayed him, been forgiven, betrayed him again, and the
horror of the brutalities I had used.  Maxim's cool voice told it all,
sparely and without elaboration.  And as it was laid out before them
all, as my real nature was revealed to them, shame buried me.  I
wanted to be buried and hidden, I wanted to be long lost and
forgotten.  I wanted death.  The carnivorous joy I had felt in his
pain was long, long in the past.

Maxim was finishing the story now.

"Aron has since been medically examined.  He has extensive bruising to
his entire body, including especially his genital area and his face,
and numerous cuts.  His anus has been torn in several places.  The
ligaments of his shoulders have been torn.  One tooth has been
loosened and may require extraction.  Fortunately, most of this damage
will heal without many problems.  Psychologically, he is experiencing
serious difficulties in coming to terms with what happened and will
need long and intensive therapy.  That is all."

I tried not to weep in front of them all, but I failed.

"Thank you," said Anthony.  "Having heard that, let me express my
admiration for the young man in coming here.  This hearing was largely
at your request, was it not, Aron?"

"Yes, sir.  I need to know why he did it.  That's all.	Why."

"It would appear that he is psychopathic.  Is that not an explanation
of sorts?"

"With respect, sir, that is just a word.  I need to know what is going
on inside him.	I know that it wasn't just, just pointless.  I'm sure
there was something else there, that he feels something for me.  And I
can't understand why he did it.  I would have given him ANYTHING if he
had just given me the time.  He... I wanted him to be my Master."

"As it turned out, he is quite unfit to be the Master of a dog, let
alone a human, let alone such a young man as yourself."

"Sir, I feel that if things had been just slightly different, that
would not have been so."

I was weeping silently.  I had drawn my feet onto the chair, my knees
under my chin.	I couldn't bear to watch.  Every second was
inexpressibly painful.

"Aron," said Paul.  He was a man in his sixties, and I thought I
remembered Aron mentioning him before.  "My boy, just how much insight
did you have into this man?  What did you think he was like?"

There was a pause, and when Aron spoke, I could hear he was near to
tears.

"He didn't fool me.  I knew there was something bad going on in there.
Remember, he had done it before, he ignored my safeword, and even
before that I could feel - somehow - I knew he was dangerous.  You
could see, when he talked, when he changed.  When the bad feelings
came up, you could feel it.  And I have to say this, to be fair:  I
found it attractive, the danger, it turned me on.  So when we
went to the country, I knew it was dangerous.	Anyhow, I was warned."

"Who warned you, my love?"

"The mandala.  _Exact Endeavour_.  It's done it before.  It told me:
There is bad in him, he means you wrong."

Anthony cleared his throat.

"Is it true that Aron's intuition is guided in such an explicit way?
If so, it's very remarkable in someone so young."

"I can speak to that," said Colin.  "Yes, it has happened several
times before.  As you say, it's remarkable.  Aron is a remarkable
person.  It's just one of the reasons why he is so dear to us all.  It
has to be said, why we asked you and Master Desmond to join us today.
We cannot think clearly about this, because all of us are a little in
love with him."

"I understand," said Anthony.  "There are certain submissives who cast
a kind of spell round them.  I know of at least one other."  He and
Paul smiled at each other.

"It seems quite extraordinary to me that this was allowed to happen,"
said Desmond, speaking for the first time.  "I must ask you this,
Aron, although I know it may be painful.  If you knew he meant wrong
to you, why did you agree to go away alone with him?"

I dared not look at him, but I could tell he was weeping now.

"I had to try.	I knew it was dangerous, but I had to give him a
chance.  I could show him what he could have, if he'd only just...
just drop all that, and just take what I could give.  How could I not
do it?	He was entitled to my help, he was my Master!  I could see it
nearly worked, really, it was just so near.  But in the end the best I
could do wasn't enough, and I failed.  Oh, Tol," and he was yelling
and sobbing now, "I'm so, so, sorry!"

I couldn't bear it.  I screamed and dropped to the floor, rolled into
a ball.

For a few minutes it seemed there was chaos.  Andrew and another
person were halping me back into my chair, and another brought me a
glass of some liquid which they made me drink, and gradually I calmed.
I sat weeping.	It seemed that nothing worse could possibly happen.

"Aron, do I understand this correctly?" said Anthony, once there was
quiet. "You went willingly with this man, knowing that he would
probably do terrible things to you, but thinking there was some slight
chance you could dissuade him?	And that you did this because you felt
he was entitled to your help, because you regarded him as your
Master?"

"Yes, sir."

"And now you sit there, and actually reproach yourself, you, for
failing him?"

"Somehow, somehow, I should have done better.  If only...  Everything
would have been wonderful.  And now look at us all."

"Aron, dear child.  Now I can understand only too clearly what Colin
said.  You took on yourself a burden far too heavy for any slave.  You
went open-eyed into terrible danger.  And you did it with all the
courage that one would expect from a member of your family, and more.
And you are only sixteen years old!  In a very, very long life, I have
rarely met anybody for whom I feel a greater respect."

"There is no one here who would reproach you, dear love," said Paul.
"No one at all who would have anything but admiration for you."

"No one?" said Aron, and I could hear an edge of hysteria in his
voice.	"How about Tol?  How about him?  What does he say, then?"

"Well, Mr Burnley," said Anthony, "Are we to hear from you now?  Or
would you prefer another histrionic display?"

And then I felt it well up again, this time as a self-pitying self-
justifying outburst, full of the sarcastic brutalism which was my
daily stock-in-trade at work.  Prick-teaser, over-sexed, teenage
irresponsibility, spoiled brat, whiner - all the words were there.
But this time it didn't win.  My shame didn't allow it.  I couldn't
show these people again what I was like, what I was really like.

Above all, it was a horror beyond bearing to put Aron through any more
pain.

I looked at the mandala behind Anthony, and to my surprise it was not
hostile;  rather it seemed considering, calculating, thoughtful.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Aron," I said.  "You did nothing
wrong at all.  It was all me.  It was only me who brought the bad
things, not you at all.  Even if you hadn't tried, you couldn't be
blamed.  But you did try.  No one has cared for me for a long time,
but you did, and all I did in return was to be vile.  There's no point
in saying I'm sorry for what I did, some things you just can't
apologise for.	But you at least have nothing to be sorry for at all."

It was the best I could do.  I didn't feel any of it;  only, that it
was what was needed.  Anything that wouldn't make them despise me even
more.

Anthony looked at me curiously. Then, oddly, he turned to look at the
mandala for a long, long time.

"Thank you, Mr Burnley.  Well, Aron.  I need to hear from you, and I'm
afraid I must still place a burden on you, as Andrew did.  Andrew is a
perceptive young man, and so it's not surprising that we end up here
again.	Do you think it best that Mr Burnley should die?"

There was only a short pause before Aron spoke.

"No.  I don't know what to do with him, but someone may be able to get
good out of him.  I don't think I ever want to see him again.  But I
can't bring myself to say that we should - get rid of him."

"Very well.  I speak now before _Just Revenge_.  Your courage has
bought his life.  Whether that's a good bargain, we shall see.	And
now, we have to work out what to do with him, but for that, I don't
think we need him here."

-

12
I was back in the cell, and even welcomed it.  The last hour had been
the most harrowing, the most devastating of my life.  If I had been
able, I would gladly have chosen death instead of it, and when Anthony
pronounced his reprieve, I just felt a blank despair that there seemed
to be no end.

I sat on the pallet rocking backwards and forwards, and screaming from
the pain.

Time passed, I don't know how long, probably hours.  The screaming
died down to a tuneless keening noise.	Thought was impossible;  my
mind was filled with waking visions of Aron and Duncan.

I was still like this when Andrew returned.  I didn't even look at
him, I was scarcely aware that he was there.  Finally he shook me.

"Hey!  Burnley!  Snap out of it!  Hey!	There's things to do!"

With a jump my mind focussed.

"Oh god in heaven.  What's next?"

"There's been a long discussion about what to do with you.  We can
offer you two alternatives."

"Why the fuck didn't you just kill me, Andrew?"

"You heard why not.  All I can say is, it's lucky for you they didn't
ask me to choose, that's all."

"Lucky!  You call that luck?"

"Fuck.  Shite, self-pitying shite.  Amateur dramatics.  Burnley, I
really can't be bothered.  Are you going to listen to me?"

I said nothing.  After a moment he went on.

"Okay.  You choose.  We can call in the police.  You'll be jailed, for
GBH and sexual assault on a minor.  That'll be about ten years.  And
you'll be a nonce in jail, Burnley, you know what that means?  That's
one choice.  The other is to let us look after you.  That'll be hard
in a whole lot of other ways.  Those are your options.  Take your
pick."

That was no choice at all.  Child molestors in British jails are the
lowest of the low.  There can't be a worse fate than that.

"Not much of a choice, is it?"

"More than you gave Aron.  He was going to be turned into, what was
it?  A cipher, with no thoughts, no feelings and no will, wasn't that
it?  Come on, make your choice."

"I choose the second alternative."

"You choose to give yourself into our care?"

"Your care?  Spare me."

I laughed bitterly.

"Well, if that's your choice, there are these papers to sign."

"Papers?"

"This one is our document.  Read it, then sign.  Here."

He gave it to me.

   "I, Tolgrund Burnley, as an alternative to being handed to the
   police for prosecution in respect of my treatment of Aron
   Miheliewicz Chernik, hereby surrender my person to the custody of
   his friends as a ward of the way, and consent to any treatment
   of me they may choose, reserving only my life.

   "Signed

   "Tolgrund Burnley."

"Before you sign it, let me point out that it means just what it says.
You consent to us doing anything at all to you.  The only thing we
can't do is kill you."

"Give me the pen."

He gave it to me.  I crossed out "reserving only my life", initialed
the alternation, and signed it.

"Why did you do that?"

"Honest to god, Andrew, if you kill me, it'll be a relief."

He made no comment, but handed me the other paper.

"This gives me your power of attorney."

"You?  Why you?  And why do you need that?"

"Maxim didn't want the job.  He couldn't trust himself to act in your
interests."

"In doing what?"

"Looking after your house, paying your bills and taxes, looking after
your investments.  You may be away for a long time."

He seemed to be talking Greek.  Bills?  Taxes?  What did they matter?
I signed, and he took the paper.

I had a sudden thought.

"Give my plants away, will you?"

"Your PLANTS?"

"The plants in my flat.  Give them to someone who'll water them.  I -
I don't want them to die."

He looked at me oddly.

"I will.  Burnley..."

"Yes?"

He gave me the smallest of smiles.

"Don't give up hope, man."

I started to weep quietly.

"Andrew.  Can you get me something to make me sleep?  I'm so tired...
but I keep seeing things.  And the dreams!"

"I'll see what I can do."

In a short while he was back with a glass full of white liquid.

"Here.  Drink this.  But lie down first.  It'll knock you flat."

"Thanks."

I lay down and drank it.

"Goodbye for now, Burnley."

I went out like a light.

-

13
When I woke, I seemed to be in a black hole.  I was lying on my side,
naked, and I was wet and cold.  My hands were cuffed behind my back.
Gradually my eyes adapted, and I could see I was outside.  It was
raining, and a lively breeze was blowing through the nearby trees.

I realised that I was on the front porch of a house, at the top of a
short flight of steps.  The house, dark, without a single light,
loomed overhead.  The wind rushed round me, and I shivered.

Something was in my mouth.  It was hard, round and tied with straps
round the back of my neck;  a completely effective gag.  I tried to
move, and found that one leg was chained to a pillar.

I couldn't move.  I couldn't cry for help.  The lights on the nearby
road were completely out of reach, a world from which I was now
excluded.  I rolled myself up tight, to wait in the dark for whatever
was going to happen to me.  The rain fell on my body.

It seemed like hours I lay there.  My cheek lay on the hard, damp
concrete of the step and the rain trickled all over me, round my head,
soaking my hair, oozing over my face.  With my hands cuffed, I
couldn't wipe it out of my eyes.  I was completely chilled, shivering
from the cold.  A puddle began to form round me, but I couldn't move
out of it.

It occurred to me that perhaps I had been left there to die alone from
cold and starvation.  I longed for someone, Andrew, anyone, to come
and get me.

Then I saw headlights, and a car crunched slowly up the drive and
stopped at the bottom of the steps.  Its lights went off, and the
engine stopped.  For a long while there was silence, and nothing
happened.

At last the passenger door opened, and someone got out.  He was quite
short, slim, wearing a long black cloak, and his boots snapped on the
steps as he slowly mounted.  I could see them as he stood next to me,
black and heavy, and above them black leather trousers, tight round
his slender legs.  I could even smell the leather, he was so close.
His voice came to me, from high, high above.

"Tol."  It was Aron.  "You could have had me, Tol.  You could have had
me.  But you threw me away."

There was a pause, and his cloak was flung back.  Then I felt his
piss, warm and languid, drenching my head, moving slowly down and up
my naked body.

"Goodbye, Tol."

I heard his steps as he moved away.  Then the car started and left.

His piss mingled with the rain, and cooled, and I started to weep.  It
was the uttermost depth of my life.

======================================================================
Continued in Part 4
======================================================================